Page 89 - CHRISTIE'S Buddhist Art Japanese Collections 09/14/17

This unusual fgure appears to belong to a group of Buddhist votive fgures
produced in Zhejiang during the Wuyue kingdom (AD 907-978), four of which
are illustrated in Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue of Chinese Buddhist
Statues in Overseas Collections, vol. 6, Beijing, 2005, pls. 1234-37: one in the
Seikado Bunko Art Museum, Japan (pl. 1234); two in the Harvard University
Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, (pls. 1235 and 1236);
and one in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pl. 1237; all dated to
the 10th century. Of these four, the fgure in the Seikado Bunko Art Museum
represents Buddha, while the other three represent bodhisattvas. All of these
fgures including the current fgure of Buddha have similar, distinctive facial
features, a very similar openwork aureole, and are seated on a fat circular
disk. In the case of the published fgures, this circular disk is ftted into a
lotus, which appears to be of two types: one type has the appearance of
a large, rounded fower head composed of multiple, narrow, convex petals
attached to a central structure (Seikado Bunko Art Museum and The
Metropolitan Art Museum fgures); the other two are low and cast with
more standard lotus petals and are raised on a waisted pedestal (Harvard
Fig. 1 Bronze bodhisattva, Wuyue kingdom (AD 907-978), 11 ½ in. high, Fletcher Fund, Metropolitan
Museum of Art , accessioned in 1925, photo source: metmuseum.org.
University Museum fgures). These lotus-form sections are, in turn, raised on
a censer-like platform of barbed petal outline with a pierced top and six small
legs which rest on top of a tiered stand.
The bodhisattva in The Metropolitan Museum of Art is also illustrated by
D. Leidy and D. Strahan in Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist
Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, pp. 110-12, no.
22, where the authors ascribe the fgure to Zhejiang province, which during
the 10th century was the center of the Wuyue kingdom (AD 907-978). (Fig. 1)
They note that the “kingdom was ruled by members of the Qian family, noted
for their devotion to Buddhism and their patronage of the arts”, and point out
that the large fowers and type of foliate scrolls in the openwork aureole are
characteristic of works produced in the Zhejiang area. In the discussion of
the unusual construction of the sculpture, p. 110, the fat disk on which the
fgure sits is described as a “fat removable lid with three semi-circular feet”
that “serves as a cover for the lotus”.
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